A couple months ago, the SCOTUS blog ran a Symposium on the constitutional issues concerning Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. In light of today’s Supreme Court decision to address those issues in the Shelby County case, here’s an… Continue reading

The well-known federal district judge, Myron Thompson, recently finished presiding over one of the largest and most important recent trials in which the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section sought to convict numerous state legislators and campaign contributors of federal… Continue reading

Her enigmatic, knowing smile comes to mind each time I re-read Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion. How much of his opinion reflects his own purely internal legal analysis, how much his concern for perceptions about the institutional authority and legitimacy of… Continue reading

We will know, of course, in a couple of hours. But in all the commentary on the health-care cases, I do not recall seeing the following possibility explored (though surely someone else must have had this thought). So I wanted… Continue reading

In holding Montana’s ban on corporate electioneering unconstitutional today, the Supreme Court stuck to its guns about Citizens United and put the lie to shallow, but frequently repeated, theories about how much public opinion constrains the Court. According to these… Continue reading

Thomas E. Perez, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, is speaking today at an academic forum for students and faculty at NYU Law School.  I am the host and moderator for… Continue reading

Under the broad heading of Living in a Citizens United World, the NY Times has a longer-than-usual editorial entitled “When Other Voices Are Drowned Out.”  The key sentence is this:  “But when outside spending is unlimited, and political speech depends… Continue reading

The cert. petition pending before the Supreme Court concerning the criminal conviction of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman raises important issues concerning whether campaign contributions can ever be treated as bribes and, if so, under what circumstances.  Rick Hasen has… Continue reading

Several months ago I wrote to argue against the constantly-repeated storyline that cast Citizens United as responsible for the explosion of SuperPacs in this election cycle.  Though I have written critically about the Court’s decision, I was also skeptical of… Continue reading

Today’s Supreme Court decision in the Texas redistricting case is largely a win for the State of Texas, for reasons I explained in advance of the decision.  But the Court forged a “compromise” solution that was not raised or discussed… Continue reading

1.  There’s been speculation that the Court might adopt a “compromise” solution, first floated at oral argument by Justice Kagan, in the Texas cases.  If so, my view is that this would be one of those “compromises” that actually gives… Continue reading

One of the historical oddities about today’s debates over corporate money and elections is that the issue maps so directly onto partisan political differences, at least among national political players.  As I’ve noted before, the deeper, long-term pattern historically has… Continue reading

Yesterday, the indispensable Supreme Court blog ran a discussion on what we know at this stage about how much the Citizen's United decision is affecting campaign financing.  Because I have a somewhat different view on this question than Rick Hasen… Continue reading

The 2011 Supplement to the The Law of Democracy:  Legal Structure of the Political Process (3rd ed.), written by Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela Karlan, and Richard Pildes, is now available.  Foundation Press has graciously made the Supplement available without charge to… Continue reading